Chapter 6: The Road

January 29, 1983
Texarkana, Texas

The deputy was about as stereotypical of a Texas lawman as he could be. He was tall, white, had a gut that protruded over his belt, and he wore an actual Smokey the Bear hat upon his head. He had black leather gloves upon his hands. His light blue uniform featured an American flag on the shoulder and a five-pointed star pinned above the left pocket. His southern accent was so thick as to be nearly unintelligible.

"Ya'll better eat up your chow now," he told them, pointing at two trays of watery powdered eggs and burnt toast that he had shoved through the bars. "Ya ain't getting nothin' else until supper time. And that's only if ya'll are here and not down at the courthouse."

Jake glanced at the food, not just with disinterest but with actual repugnance - this despite the fact that he'd eaten nothing in the past twenty-four hours. "I'm not hungry," he said.

"Me either," replied Matt, who was sitting on the bench next to him.

They were in a holding cell in the Bowie County jail in downtown Texarkana, Texas, being held on charges of drunk and disorderly, multiple counts of assault and battery, and, most serious, assault with a deadly weapon. Both of them were quite battered. Jake had a spectacular black eye, two lacerations to his cheek and one to his forehead, and an array of bruises across his chest and back. Matt had a broken nose, two cracked ribs, and an impressive collection of body bruises as well. They were dressed in bright orange jumpsuits with BOWIE COUNTY PRISONER stenciled in black on the legs and back.

The deputy looked at them suspiciously. "Ya'll on some kinda hunger strike or somethin'? Like them Irish terrorist pukes a few years ago?"

"No," Matt said. "We just don't want to eat that swill. We'll eat as soon as we get out of this shithole."

The deputy shook his head. "Ya'll ain't getting' outta here for a long time. Ain't you figured that out yet?"

Matt simply shrugged. Jake didn't respond at all.

They had been arrested just after four o'clock the previous afternoon, at a truck stop on Interstate 30 just inside the Texarkana city limits. The tour had been on its way from Dallas, where they'd done a show the night of January 27, to Little Rock, where they were scheduled to do a show tonight. It was one of their extended travel period days off and, as such, they had not left Dallas until almost eleven in the morning, which meant the entire band and crew had been able to sleep in and stock up on some much needed rest. Since they were reasonably well rested upon setting out that morning, the band had begun drinking and partying as the bus had rolled down the interstate, all of them eagerly anticipating arriving in Little Rock that night, a night when there was no show scheduled, where they would check into their hotel and lie around watching TV, where they would crash out about eleven and sleep through the night. Extended travel days were something everyone looked forward to, even Greg and Janice. But when they'd stopped at the Texarkana truck stop to refuel the busses and the trucks Jake and Matt - who both had the munchies and wanted to buy a pie - had begged some cash from Greg and then gone into the diner. There they'd encountered a group of truckers sitting at the counter eating their suppers. The trouble began within seconds.

"Hole-ee shit," one of them said, looking at the two musicians. "Look at the hair on these boys. What the hell you boys doing with hair like a girls?"

"Maybe they are girls," another trucker said, causing them all to crack up at his wit.

"Ya'll like to suck dicks, boys?" another put in. "That why you wears your hair so long?"

Things might have ended right there if they'd kept their mouths shut or just left the diner. But they did neither. Instead Matt looked them over and said, "Well Goddamn, if it ain't a bunch of garden variety shitkickers. Everyone named Billy Bob, raise your hand."

The biggest of the truckers stood up so fast his stool fell over. His was in his early forties, about six and a half feet tall, and at least three hundred pounds. Several prison tattoos decorated his arms. "You lookin' for trouble, boy?" he asked Matt. Meanwhile, the rest of the truckers stood up and sauntered over, forming a loose circle around them.

"Uhh... Matt," Jake said, looking from one to the other. "Maybe we should..."

"You think you can give me some trouble, Bubba?" Matt asked. "Come on and give it a shot. I'll kick your fat ass from here to the fuckin' Alamo."

And that had started it off. Bubba (or whatever his name was) swung a roundhouse at Matt, who easily ducked under it and drove a solid right into Bubba's stomach. The catcalls from the other truckers began. The waitress - who was actually named Flo and had an actual nametag on her pink uniform proclaiming this - told them to take it outside. But things were too far gone for that. Bubba launched an attack, driving at Matt with his fists. Matt, a veteran of many barroom brawls, blocked most of them, ducked away from a few others, and then launched a counter-attack, landing a solid right to Bubba's cheek and a solid left to his nose.

The other truckers stayed out of it at first - no doubt driven by some sort of Texas sense of fair play. But when Matt started to really hammer Bubba's face, splitting his lip open, breaking a tooth, making him gag on his blood, they tried to move in and break it up.

"That's enough, boy," one of them told him, grabbing at Matt's arm.

Matt then made his big mistake. Instead of stopping he turned on the man trying to break it up and punched him in the face as well. All sense of fair play ended at the moment.

"Oh shit," Jake said, resigned, as the entire room rushed at the two of them.

Jake - who was not a veteran of barroom brawls, who in fact always tried to talk himself out of such situations if possible - held his own pretty well. He broke the nose of the first guy to come at him, felled the second with a kick to the balls, and held off the third by driving an elbow into his solar plexus. But then a fourth man slipped in from the right flank and delivered a solid blow to his face, stunning him. A fifth hit him with a shot to his kidneys that made him drop to his knees. And then there were fists pummeling him everywhere, hitting his face, his neck, his chest, his stomach. The adrenaline took over and he managed to pull himself out of there long enough to grab a plate from the counter which he promptly broke over someone's head (thus the assault with a deadly weapon charge). And then he was hit with a chair from behind, driving him back to his knees and opening him up for another furious attack.

Matt, meanwhile, had dropped two of the truckers to the ground, knocking them clean unconscious, but the rest had overwhelmed him and taken him down. They kicked him and punched him until he stopped fighting and was barely conscious himself.

Right about then, the cops showed up, pulling into the parking lot, red lights flashing, sirens blaring. And despite Greg's pleas, threats, and other reconciliatory attempts, Jake and Matt were both handcuffed and driven first to the local hospital where they were stitched and examined and then the jail cell where they were now residing. Not a single one of the truckers had joined them there.

"So ya'll are rock music stars, huh?" the deputy asked them now.

"Yeah," Jake said. "I guess we are."

"Ya'll think that gives you the right to come into people's towns and start a bunch of trouble? Ya think 'cause you're rich and famous you kin do whatever you want?"

"No," Jake said. "We don't think that at all."

"Well I guess them boys at the truck stop taught you a lesson or two, didn't they?"

"Yeah," Jake said. "I guess they did."

"I seen that video thing ya'll put out," the deputy said next. "That thing about hell." He pronounced this hay-all.

Jake said nothing. He ached everywhere and just wanted this man to go away.

"Ya'll think its funny making music about the Devil?"

"The song's not about the Devil," Jake said. "Did you ever listen to it?"

"I caught my daughter watchin' that crap on the MTV," he said. "I seen all I needed to see. Why don't you boys try makin' some real music instead of damnin' your souls to hell by peddlin' that Satan worshipin' stuff?"

"Real music?" Jake asked. "What kind of music would that be?"

"There's two kinds of real music. Country and Western. You'll never catch Hank Junior or Waylon singin' about no Devil worshippin' crap."

"No, I don't suppose you would," Jake sighed.

"How old is your daughter?" Matt asked.

"She's seventeen," he said. "Just started her senior year of high school."

"Yeah?" Matt said. "What's she look like? Would I do her?"

"Shit," Jake muttered as the deputy's face turned an infuriated red.

"Boy," the deputy said dangerously, "you say one more thing about my daughter and you gonna find out what an elevator ride is all about."

And of course, Matt didn't let it drop. "I can get her tickets for the show in Little Rock," he said. "I can even get her a backstage pass. Of course, there's a certain price she has to pay for that. Does she swallow? Or would she rather take it up the ass?"

"That's it," the deputy said. He spoke into his radio and less than twenty seconds later four more deputies were there with him. They opened the cell door and pounced on Matt, wrestling him down and handcuffing him. Jake made a move to help him but two more deputies had arrived by then and held him back. Matt was dragged off down the hall, disappearing around the corner.

He was brought back twenty minutes later, barely conscious, and dumped back on the floor.

Slowly he became coherent enough to talk and relate to Jake just what the elevator ride entailed.

"They put me in the elevator," he said, "and put a football helmet on my head. And then they hit me across the head over and over again with a Dallas telephone book."

"Wow," Jake said, looking at Matt's face. Though he had been beaten to within an inch of his life, there wasn't a single mark on him that hadn't been there before. "Those guys have a little more imagination than I thought."

"No shit," Matt groaned.

"You know something?" Jake said. "You really need to learn to control your mouth a little."

Matt shrugged. "You can't change who you are, you know?"

"Yeah, I know."

They sat in there for another hour, watching flies eat their breakfast and listening to the catcalls, hoots, and yells of other prisoners. Finally the same deputy came back, his face red, his fists clenched. He seemed even more upset than he'd been when Matt had been talking about his daughter. He spoke into his radio and the cell door slid open on its track.

"Git your stinkin' asses outta there," he told them.

"Are we going for another elevator ride?" Matt asked, making no move to stand. "If so, you'd better get those other five guys in here to help, because I ain't going quietly."

"Shut your ass, rock star, and git the hell out of there," he said. "Your rich, faggot Hollywood friends bought your asses free."

Matt and Jake looked at each other carefully.

"Really?" Matt said.

It was true. A couple of high priced lawyers from Dallas had shown up and re-interviewed the "victims" in the case - the group of truckers who Jake and Matt had allegedly assaulted - and the witnesses to the fracas - Flo the waitress and the other non-involved patrons. All of them - the truckers included - had changed their stories around so that Jake and Matt were now portrayed as the victims and the truckers as the aggressors. Since they no longer had a case that the district attorney would be able to win a preliminary hearing on, much less successfully prosecute, the Texarkana Police Department was withdrawing all charges.

"Does it feel good?" the deputy asked them as he led them through the halls. "Does it feel good knowin' that your rich friends passed out a couple a envelopes full a money and got a whole group of honest men and women to lie before God just so you can make your next concert?"

"Yeah," Matt said. "It does, actually."

Jake had to agree with this sentiment as well. "Fuckin' A."

They were led into a changing room where they were given back their clothes and the few belongings they'd had on them when they were arrested. The clothes were tattered and bloody of course, but someone had arranged for them to have fresh clothing instead. They took off the orange jumpsuits, tossed them into a laundry hamper, and got dressed. They signed the forms that were put in front of them and were then taken to the discharge area.

"Ya'll are free to go now," the deputy told them sourly.

Greg - dressed in his customary suit and wearing his customary grin - was waiting for them. "Thank you, officer," he said politely before turning to his musicians. "Boys. How are you doing? Did they treat you well?"

"Oh they treated us real well," Matt said, casting an eye at the deputy. "In fact, this officer was telling me that his daughter is an Intemperance fan, can you believe that?"

"Oh really?" Greg said.

"Any chance you could set her up with a couple of tickets for the Little Rock show?" Matt asked. "And maybe some backstage passes for after the show?"

"Well sure," Greg replied, turning to the deputy. "Just tell me where I should send them and I'll..."

"Get out," the deputy said through clenched teeth. "All of you, get the hell out of this jail and God help you if I ever see you out on the streets of this or any other town again!"

Greg's grin faded. "Well..." he started.

"Uh... I think we should go now," Jake said. "Right now."

They went. There was a limousine waiting for them in front of the jail. It took them to the Texarkana airport where a rented helicopter was standing by, its rotors turning at idle. Forty-five minutes after lifting off, they landed at the Little Rock airport where another limo took them to their hotel, reuniting them with the rest of the band. Doreen fussed over them for the better part of two hours, covering all of their visible bruises with thick make-up. Not only did they make it to the show on time, they made their radio station interviews and their record store signings as well.

It didn't happen very often, but the day following the Little Rock show was another extended travel period day off. They slept in until 10:30 - which was good since they'd partied at the hotel room until almost four the previous morning - and were on the road by eleven, headed for Baton Rouge. They arrived at their hotel - yet another cheap, non-descript lodging facility - just after seven that evening. Jake and Matt were paired together on this night and by 8:30 both of them were lying in their respective beds, shirtless and wearing sweatpants, watching Simon and Simon on the television.

"How's your ribs?" Jake asked, taking a final drag from his cigarette and then snubbing it out in the ashtray. He picked up a glass of soda - no booze in it tonight - and took a drink.

"Down to a mild throb," Matt told him. "Those codeine pills Greg gave me take the edge off." He yawned. "Make me tired too."

"I don't need codeine to make me tired. I'm wasted pretty much constantly."

"Yeah," Matt said, lighting a fresh cigarette of his own. "Life on the road."

"Yep."

They sat in silence for awhile, Matt smoking, Jake staring at the television without really seeing anything.

"Still haven't called her?" Matt finally asked.

He was talking about Angie of course. "No," Jake said. "Not yet."

He had had no communication with Angie at all since leaving Los Angeles. Not a letter or a phone call. God only knew what she thought about him now. He thought about how he'd promised to call her every day, twice if he could, how flippantly he'd made that promise, how naïve he'd been when it had passed his lips.

The first two weeks of their tour had passed in an unbelievable blur, a harsh and unforgiving routine of sound checks, bus rides, autograph sessions, radio station interviews, eating, drinking, getting wasted, and, briefly, for one hour every day, performing. The cities they visited passed one by one, some of them the most famous and historical cities in American history, and they saw nothing of them but hotel rooms, auditoriums, record stores, and freeway systems. From the bus windows they saw high rises, factories, parking lots, and fuel stations. Jake screamed out the names of these cities to their inhabitants, yelling them with enthusiasm, as if he were proud to be there, honored to be there, and with none of the residents realizing that he had to be reminded just what city he was currently in before he stepped out onto the stage each night. He fucked beautiful women in each city, sometimes two at a time, occasionally three at a time, and he never learned their names at all, never knew anything about them, never cared to know anything about them. And with each of these encounters he felt less and less guilt about his lack of fidelity, less and less guilt that he had not managed to call Angie yet.

Not that he hadn't tried, or at least made the effort. Their first extended travel break - after the Boston show but before the Buffalo show - he had actually picked up the hotel phone, his apology speech and excuses rehearsed and waiting on his lips. But the moment he began to dial, the busy signal started to sound in his ears. A retry produced the same result. A call to the hotel switchboard for assistance informed him that long distance calls were no authorized from his room.

"Who the hell asked for that?" Jake had asked.

"The person who made the reservations and paid for the rooms," he was told.

"Greg," he said, seething. He hung up and called Greg's room, demanding an explanation.

"We're on a strict budget for the hotel rooms," Greg told him. "They're paid in advance and we have no accommodation for extras like long distance calls."

"Are you kidding?" Jake asked. "What about all the room service we order? Isn't that an extra?"

"No, we pay a flat fee in advance for food service. It doesn't matter what you eat, it's all covered under a negotiated flat rate."

"But you can't do that same thing with phone calls?"

"All your local calls are free."

"I don't want to make a local call," he yelled. "Who the hell do I know in Buffalo? I need to call Los Angeles and talk to my girlfriend!"

"Well that's easy," Greg said. "Call her collect."

Jake slammed the phone down at that point. He knew that Greg's suggestion made sense, but he couldn't bring himself to call a girl collect to apologize to her for not calling. And so the phone call went unmade. The next day he fell back into the rabbit hole of consecutive tour dates and the next time he found himself in a hotel room in a relative state of sobriety and with the time to actually make the call, the thought of calling collect was even more repugnant.

"Would she even want to talk to me now?" Jake asked Matt as Simon and Simon reached the exciting conclusion for the week. "I mean, would she even accept the charges?"

"You're asking me? Matt replied with a laugh. "The man who has made a life out of not caring what women think? You're the fucking Romeo. You figure it out."

Jake looked at the phone. He didn't pick it up. "I don't even know what day it is," he said. "Is it Saturday?"

Matt stared at the television, thinking as hard as he ever did about anything. "I think it's Tuesday," he finally said.

"Tuesday? No way. We did the show in Houston on Wednesday and got arrested on Thursday. That means the Little Rock show was Friday and this is Saturday night."

"No," Matt said. "Houston was four days ago. We got arrested after Dallas, remember?"

"Oh yeah," Jake said, shaking his head. "So that would make it Sunday then, not Tuesday."

"No," Matt protested. "It has to be Tuesday because when we did the Austin show it was Thursday and Dallas was the next day."

"No," Jake disagreed. "We did San Antonio in between Houston and Dallas, remember?"

Matt thought that over. "Fuck, you're right," he said.

"And El Paso was in there somewhere too, wasn't it? Was that before or after Austin?"

"Or was it before San Antonio?" Matt asked.

This discussion went on for several more minutes, long enough for both of them to realize that they had no idea whatsoever what day it actually was and that they had no frame of reference they could agree upon in order to fix a day in the past. It was not the most comfortable realization.

"So what about your bitch?" Matt asked when they finally stopped racking their brains about it. "You gonna call her, or what?"

"I don't even know if she's home," Jake said. "If I don't know what day it is, I don't know if she's at work or not."

Matt rolled his eyes upward. "If she's not home then no one will answer the fucking phone," he said. "It's not like a nuclear device is gonna go off under the White House if she's not there."

This was sound logic but Jake uncharacteristically did not allow it to sway him. "I think it's been too long for a phone call," he said. "I need to talk to her face to face."

"And when are you going to do that?"

"After the Louisville show next week," he said. "That's the end of our first leg. We'll have two weeks off and Greg said they'll fly us back to LA."

"Really?" Matt said. "That's bitchin'."

"They're not doing it out of the kindness of their hearts," Jake replied. "It's cheaper to fly us home and then back to Hartford when we start the second leg than it is to pay for two weeks worth of hotel rooms somewhere."

"Ahhh," Matt said, nodding. "Of course."

Jake lit another cigarette, took another drink of his soda, his brain pondering. He looked over at Matt. "Home," he said. "That's a funny thing to be talking about right now."

"How's that?"

"I don't have a home."

"Huh?" Matt said, looking at him strangely.

"I'm not talking figuratively either," Jake explained. "I'm talking literally. I gave up my apartment in Heritage when we moved to LA. I gave up my apartment in LA when we went on the road. I don't live anywhere at all. My mail is going to some PO box. If I left the tour right now, I wouldn't have anywhere to go to and no money to go there with."

"Are you thinking of leaving the tour?"

"No," Jake said. "But that's not my point. My point is that even if I wanted to, I couldn't. Not unless I wanted to be stranded in Baton Rouge or New Orleans or someplace like that without a dollar or even a quarter in my pocket. Did you ever wonder why they seem to make sure we don't have any money on us?"

"What's to wonder about?" Matt asked. "We haven't made any fucking money yet. The album has sold almost three hundred thousand copies but we're still a couple thousand fathoms in the hole because of the recoupable expenses."

This was all very true. Descent Into Nothing - the album - was selling like hotcakes all across the nation, much faster than the record execs had predicted. The biggest sales spikes were appearing in the cities that Intemperance had visited as part of the tour, spiking there in every case in the three days following the concert. And Descent Into Nothing - the single - was doing even better. When they'd listened to the top forty countdown on the radio during the bus ride to Baton Rouge earlier that day (and if either Jake or Matt would have remembered that the top forty countdown was always on Sunday, they would have realized what day it was) their song was spending its third week in the top ten, this time occupying the number six spot. Again, this was much higher than the record execs had expected since album sales were the moneymakers with hard rock bands and the individual songs usually didn't fare well on the charts. But even with all of these remarkable sales, the first of the four yearly royalty periods had passed with Intemperance - the band - still in the red, their recoupable expenses still being paid off. Though National Records was raking in the money, the band members had yet to see a penny beyond their initial advance.

"It's not just that though," Jake said. "Even if we were out of the recoupable expense hole and bringing in thousands - millions in royalties, we still wouldn't be able to get our hands on any of it out here on the road. Those checks would just be sitting in our PO boxes uncashed. I don't even have my checkbook with me and even if I did, who's going to cash an out of town check for us? They don't want us to have any money, Matt. They want us to have to rely on them for everything. Remember when we wanted to get the pie?"

"How could I forget?" he asked sourly. That had, after all, led to their beating, arrest, and general mistreatment by the Texas authorities.

"We had to beg for money from Greg in order to do that. And that was just a pie. What would happen if we wanted to go see some sights here in Baton Rouge and asked him to give us some cash for a rental car? Or what if we wanted to cruise New Orleans when we're there? After all, Mardi Gras is this week and we're gonna be in the Big Easy. You think he'd kick loose some cash for us?"

"No," Matt said at once, remembering how reluctant Greg had been to even give them money for the pie.

"Without money, we can't do anything," Jake said. "We can't even leave the hotel rooms. Food, booze, pot, coke, women - all of that is provided for us, but if we wanted to go hit some nice restaurant down on Bourbon Street... forget it. We couldn't even get a cab to take us down there. We couldn't even take the fucking city bus."

The next few days passed in its usual consecutive shows blur. They performed in Baton Rouge, in New Orleans, in Jackson, in Memphis. They did drugs and drank alcohol and fucked groupies. They crashed hard and were awakened with cocaine instead of coffee. And then, on February 4, came Nashville, the heart and soul of the country and western music industry. You would hardly be able to tell that by the crowd that filed into the 9000 seat Memphis Memorial Auditorium. Intemperance and Earthstone had sold it out weeks in advance and on the night of the show it was stuffed to the rafters with teenagers and young adults, most of the females in tight mini-skirts or tight jeans, most of the males sporting long hair and a variety of rock band T-shirts. A sea of lighters was held aloft when Jake, Matt, Bill, Darren, and Coop took the stage and began to play.

After the show, as they were sitting in their dressing room, sipping their first beers of the night, smoking their first post-show cigarettes, snorting their first post-show lines of cocaine, all of them were noticeably more gleeful than usual.

"Louisville, Kentucky tomorrow night and then two weeks off!" Jake said happily, taking the bong from Coop and inhaling a tremendous hit.

"I can't wait to go back to LA," Matt said. "By now we're famous there. The bitches will be throwing pussy at us. I'm gonna hit up every nightclub I can and fuck a bitch in every one. And the nightclubs that have B's as the first letter in any word of their name, I'm gonna either fuck two or fuck one up the ass."

Everyone cracked up at this, not only because it was funny but because they knew Matt took such vows seriously. If he said he was going to do that, then he meant to do just that.

Jake coughed out his hit. "Jesus, Matt," he said, still chortling. "Where do you come up with this shit?"

"It's the way my mind works."

Greg walked into the room. "Hey, guys," he said in his best glad-handed manner, the way he talked when he was pretending to be just one of the boys. "Great show tonight. You rocked hard and steadily."

"Thanks," Matt said blandly. "And you set up your usual impressive spread of hooch, blow, and smoke. So what about the groupies?"

"Yeah," Bill said. "Is Jack gathering us a suitable cross-section of Nashville promiscuousness?"

This caused another outburst of laughter. They were in a good mood indeed.

"I know nothing about that," Greg said in his best conspiratorial voice. "You boys are aware of my views on fornication."

"Hey, Greg," Coop asked. "Tell us the truth. You been doing this gig for a few years. Ain't you ever slammed a groupie? Not even once?"

"Never," Greg said with righteous conviction. "My wife and I were sealed in the Temple. To violate our vows would be the utmost betrayal of my faith before Heavenly Father."

"But snorting a couple grams of coke a week is cool with The Man?" Jake asked.

Greg grinned. "That's just to keep me alert and responsive enough to do this trying job I've been assigned," he said. "It's a minor infraction and I'm sure I'll be forgiven come judgment, especially in light of all the other temptations I avoid."

"Of course," Jake said.